Love on Call (4 page)

She glanced around, then nodded. “Like that.”

“This is interesting.” He pulled up a chair and straddled it. “Tell me about the ghost.”

“Is that what you all were talking about?”

He nodded. “They believe a ghost helped Jeffrey Amberson wake up.”

“And you believe she had nothing to do with it, right?”

“I believe there's a security breach going on here and it's with the knowledge of the staff.”

Mallory stood up. She looked Brad directly in the eye. “I find it hard to believe that a man who can have such rapport with children, who can gain their trust in a matter of moments, has no compassion for the rest of society.” With that she left him.

Dana came around the counter a moment later. She leaned toward Brad confidentially. “Well, I see you two are getting along just great.”

D
ana's words were still ringing in Brad's head later that night when he headed for his car. Mallory Russell did seem to rub him the wrong way. He couldn't think why. She was competent, and he found himself looking for her when he was at the hospital. Yet each time he came in contact with her, the two seemed to be at opposite poles.

Brad opened the door and hopped into the SUV. Automatically, he turned on the engine. The Luther Vandross disk he'd popped in the CD player that morning kicked in right at the place where it had stopped when he got to the hospital.

Brad had stayed late to finish up some paperwork. It was nearly eleven o'clock, and he was wide awake. He didn't really want to go home, but there was no
place else to go. If it were earlier he could pick up a game of basketball at the public court he often went to, but at this hour the guys were either asleep or pursuing their women. Brad wasn't friendly with any of them. They were just a collection of guys who played ball together. When they left the court they never saw each other, socially or professionally. But when he was waiting on the sidelines for a place in the game to open up, he often talked with them, and he knew that, for some of them, the pursuit of the opposite sex was high on their entertainment list.

Brad liked them and wondered if their apparent contentment had anything to do with that attitude. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home. It wasn't far to his residence, but he suddenly turned and headed toward the shelter on Thirteenth Street. The hospital maintained a clinic there, and he was one of the primary doctors. He would look in and see what was scheduled for morning.

Brad drove through the city, watching the neighborhoods go from well-maintained, to unmaintained, to boarded-up buildings with concrete front yards. The streets were deserted and few cars patrolled the area. Behind these doors, Brad knew, thrived a drug world that wasn't obvious from the outside. He often found himself in places like this, especially on nights he couldn't sleep. This was where he'd thought he would find his mother. Not this exact neighborhood, but one like it. His mom had left him and his brother, Owen, when they were young, and had never returned. Brad believed the reason she hadn't come
back had to do with drugs. Yet she hadn't been an addict. The drug story was just something a little boy could cling to for understanding. Brad wasn't a little boy anymore, yet he still thought of her in this kind of place.

He stopped in front of a derelict house with boarded-up windows and no door. Silently he sat looking at it, the car engine running and the lights on. Lots of people had searched for his mother. Child welfare had looked also, but she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.

Brad's eye caught something moving in the beams of his headlights. He squinted in the gloom, but could no longer see whatever it was. Time to leave, he thought. This wasn't the best section of town and he didn't need anyone hijacking his car. Putting it into gear, he pulled away from the curb.

That's when he saw her, thirty feet away. A kid. She walked slowly, slinking against the buildings, trying to make herself inconspicuous. Brad pulled up beside her and got out of the car. She didn't stop walking.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, following her on foot. “Where do you live? Do you need help?”

She said nothing. While the buildings were all dark and deserted, one streetlight glowed brightly. In the light he could see she was about twelve. Memories flooded his mind. He'd been abandoned at age nine.

The child's pants were torn and dirty, her blouse
fit poorly and her shoes were too big. One of them was missing a heel, making her limp.

“Leave me alone,” she said in a defiant voice. Brad had heard it before.

“I won't hurt you.”

“Then go away and leave me alone.”

“Do you have someplace to sleep?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“Food?”

She glared at him.

“I'm a doctor. I'll take you to a shelter.”

“Do I look like I've lost my mind?”

Brad gazed directly at her. He shook his head. “You look like someone in need of help. I'm offering it. You're too young to be out alone, especially in a place like this.”

He took her arm to lead her away, but she screamed. Then things got out of control. Red and blue lights whirled behind him. He looked around to see a black-and-white patrol car roll to a stop. The girl wrenched her arm free and took off as if death was chasing her. She disappeared into one of the abandoned buildings with the surefootedness of practice. Brad knew she'd been there before, but he had no time to think about it. A cop, with his gun drawn and pointing, shouted at him to put his hands in the air.

 

Drinking coffee to stay awake at three o'clock in the morning was something Mallory had done many times before, but she didn't think she would have to
do it tonight. After a year her hours at the hospital had settled into a routine. Most of the time they were predictable and she had plenty of energy after a full day or even a full night on her feet. Tonight, however, she had been bone tired and looking forward to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. That had been her goal when she'd climbed into bed.

Then the phone rang.

It wasn't the hospital. It was Brad Clayton. He was asking for her help. It wasn't a medical emergency, he told her immediately, but he needed her.

Mallory sat up in bed and looked at the clock. She asked him to repeat himself because she couldn't believe what she'd heard. Brad Clayton, the great and moody doctor asking her for help.

“I'm at the police station,” he said.

He wouldn't go into why he was there or why he had no car, though he said he'd been arrested. But she hadn't really needed an explanation, she hopped out of bed, dressed and left for the police station.

“I'm looking for Dr. Bradley Clayton,” she told the officer at the desk when she entered the brightly lit station. The man looked up at her and down at a clipboard, apparently checking for Brad's name.

“He'll be right out.”

Mallory moved away from the glass-paneled area where he sat. As she turned she wondered if it was bulletproof. She'd never been in a police station. It looked exactly as she expected it would. This was an old building, probably built in the 1930s and serving several government functions before being converted
into a police precinct. The walls were a drab gray, the furniture old but sturdy. The floors were marble, grooved in places from the thousands of feet that had crossed them in decades of use.

A case with trophies sat across from the officer. Mallory stared into it, not reading the inscriptions, not really seeing what was there. Her mind was on Brad and how he'd come to be arrested. What was he being charged with, and more important, why had he called
her?

An electronic click that signaled the opening of a door had Mallory turning toward the sound. Brad came out. He was wearing his bomber jacket and jeans. He looked tired. She went to him as if he were a patient about to collapse.

“Are you all right?” She took his arm. Her medical bag was in the car. He'd said it wasn't an emergency, so she hadn't carried it in.

“Let's get out of here.” He headed for the exit, and she followed him.

“My car is over there.” She pointed to the black Saab across from the station. The car had been a graduation present to herself when she completed medical school. She'd used the last of her inheritance to buy it. If she was going to have to get to the hospital in the middle of the night, she needed to have reliable transportation, and her last car, ten years old, had conveniently died. Mallory had never thought she would need to use it to go to a police station and pick up one of the hospital's upstanding doctors.

“What happened?” she asked when they were in
the car. Brad said nothing. Mallory started the engine, put the car in gear and stared straight ahead. The silence between them stretched until she couldn't stand it. He made her want to scream. Still, Mallory held her temper in check.

“Brad, where do you live?” She asked the question slowly and clearly, as if he were a child and she was trying to coax his address out of him.

“Churchill Road, 1730 Churchill Road.”

Philadelphia wasn't a planned city like Washington, D.C. It wasn't laid out numerically with avenues and streets, like Manhattan, either. One needed to know where a street was, which area of the city, in order to find it. Mallory had no idea where Churchill Road was.

“I'll need directions.”

He pointed ahead, and she started driving.

“Are you going to tell me why I had to pick you up at a police station at this hour?”

“It was all a mistake,” he answered.

Mallory waited for him to continue. She thought he might be angry because of whatever had happened, and she should give him time to recover.

“You missed the turn.”

Mallory clamped her teeth on her bottom lip to keep from saying anything. She stopped and made a U-turn, going back to the block where he'd mentioned her error.

“Right or left?” she asked.

“Left.”

His tone was cryptic, and Mallory had had enough.
“Who soured you on the world?” she demanded. Mallory was giving him a ride. She was tired. It was four o'clock in the morning and he wouldn't even give her decent directions. The least he could do was tell her what had happened. “Why did you call me?” She was no longer concerned about her tone.

“Because I thought you'd be quiet,” he retorted.

“Well, I won't. It's my car and you interrupted my night's sleep. That gives me the right to ask questions.”

“I don't want this all over the hospital,” Brad said in a more civil tone.

“How do you know I won't tell somebody?”

“You've been there a year and nobody knows a thing about you.”

Mallory wondered if that was his way of asking her questions, if people at the hospital wanted to know about her. But she wouldn't go off on that tangent. This was about him, not her.

“How much do they know about
you,
Dr. Clayton?” She paused to glance at him. “You've been at the hospital five years, and I'm the only person you could call in an emergency? I don't need a picture drawn for me.”

His jaw tightened, and she felt as if her arrow had found its mark.

“Don't blow this out of proportion,” he snapped. “I only need a ride, not a therapy session.”

“Maybe therapy is exactly what you need.”

“Turn right up here, and my house is the fifth one on the right.”

She followed his directions. The street was narrow, with cars lining both sides and no place to park. She slowed the car and pulled up level with the house. Finding an opening she thought was a parking space, she nosed the car toward it, only to see a driveway leading to a garage.

“It's my driveway,” Brad said. Mallory angled the car into it and switched off the engine. She turned toward him, staring at him long and hard.

“What?” he asked at last.

“Answers,” she said. “Now that you've decided I can be trusted not to tell the staff everything I know about you, can you please tell me what happened?”

He opened the door and got out. Mallory wasn't sure if he expected her to leave or not. Curious, and with her temper piqued by his attitude, she got out in turn and followed him up the steps to the stoop. The prewar-era building was a brick row house, sharing common walls with its neighbors, which helped provide building space for the growing city and conservation of heating fuel.

Brad opened the old-fashioned double doors with etched glass inlaid in their upper panels. He preceded her into the foyer and left her to close the door behind them. If he was trying to dissuade her from coming any farther, he didn't know how stubborn she could be. Her night was already ruined. She wanted answers.

Brad removed his jacket and tossed it on a chair in the living room. Mallory removed hers and did the same.

“I'll have some coffee,” she told him.

“You don't wait to be invited, do you?”

“Shall I make it?” She looked around for the kitchen.

He headed out and she followed. “I guess your personality is deceptively hidden at the hospital. Most of us think of you as quiet and docile.”

“I am quiet and docile,” she agreed, trying to hide her smile.

He picked up an old-fashioned coffee percolator from the stove and washed it out. She'd watched old movies where people used them, but she'd never actually seen one in operation.

Brad filled it with water and measured coffee into a metal filter before putting it on the stove.

“It'll be ready in a few minutes.”

He glanced at her, but went to the refrigerator and opened it. He studied the contents for several seconds, then closed the door without taking out anything.

“Milk and sugar,” she said, giving him instructions on how she drank her coffee. He pulled the door open again and took out a carton of milk. Then, as if he remembered something, he put it back and took out an unopened carton.

He drinks from the carton, Mallory thought. She smiled to herself, deciding it made him seem a little more human. She watched him as he moved about the small, high-ceilinged room. He was obviously upset about the evening. Mallory stood off to the side, allowing him a measure of privacy even though she was witness to his actions. He opened cabinets and
doors, but took nothing from them. She recognized leashed anger. He probably wanted to hit something or hold someone. She couldn't supply him with either outlet.

Going to him, she took his arm. “Sit down,” she told him, leading him to a chair. “I'll get the cups.”

He didn't argue. He allowed her to take over while he sat in one of the four high-back chairs surrounding the circular table. Mallory found mugs in a cabinet.